Major

8/8/09 - 3/19/10

Fifth Floor

Museum as Hub: In and Out of Context

Multimedia available  

“Museum as Hub: In and Out Of Context” marks a new development in the activity of the Museum as Hub. It reveals a partnership of arts organizations looking to pursue experimental methods of exhibition, communication, and collaboration, and considers the consequences of being part of a “hub”—what it means to displace conversations and activity from elsewhere to New York. Major considerations of “In and Out of Context” are the challenges of producing and exhibiting work in differing international contexts.

“In and Out of Context” is conceived as an evolving exhibition that incorporates works commissioned by Museum as Hub partners as well as works by an extended network of artists and organizations from around the world. Central to this presentation is the design of the Museum as Hub space by Choi Jeong Hwa that serves as an “envelope” for the coming year—a flexible, playful, yet functional space that is an active zone for viewing, discussion, and activity. The Museum as Hub space will be activated by public programs such as a seminar series, Propositions, and other informal open discussions. Additional works, projects, and discussions will be introduced to “In and Out of Context” as the project develops to offer new perspectives and demonstrate the evolution of ideas.

Click here for a PDF version of the brochure for “In and Out of Context.”

“Museum as Hub: In and Out of Context” is organized by guest curators Annie Fletcher, Van Abbemuseum; Eungie Joo, New Museum; Heejin Kim, Insa Art Space/Arko Art Center; Tobias Ostrander, Museo Tamayo; and William Wells, Townhouse Gallery.

Click here to view the Museum as Hub Archive of past projects

Sponsors TOP

Museum as Hub is made possible by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.

Images TOP

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“In and Out of Context,” installation view

Foreground:
Rana Hamadeh
INTERROGATIONS 1–5 when they ask me I’ll introduce them to you, 2008–09
Five-channel audio, text
Courtesy the artist
Commissioned by the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, for Be(com)ing Dutch

Background:
Panorámica Presents: On Hospitality
Courtesy Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City
Photo: Benoit Pailley

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Young Whan Bae
Tomorrow, 2009
Cardboard and wooden models for proposed public libraries
Collection Gyeonngi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan
Courtesy the artist
Photo: Benoit Pailley

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“In and Out of Context,” installation view

Left:
Cairo Residency Symposium
March 25–27, 2009, at the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo
Video documentation
Courtesy the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo

Right:
John Bock
PARA – SCHIZO, ensnarled, 2008
Two-channel video, color, sound, 40 min
Produced and presented by Arko Art Center and Insa Art Space of the Arts Council Korea
Edition 1/5, Collection Arko Art Center, Arko
Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, New York, and Klosterfelde, Berlin
Photo: Benoit Pailley

Profiles TOP

Young Whan Bae

b. 1969, Seoul, Korea/Lives and works in Seoul, Korea

Encompassing sculpture, painting, photography, and video, the work of Young Whan Bae bridges everyday life and art through a unique aesthetic language, achieving a subtle balance between concept and visual presentation. Roughly described as sentimental conceptualism or emotional politics, Bae’s practice brings together emotional content with political dissidence, seamlessly combining the two into humble forms. Drawing upon vernacular grassroots culture, his own history as muralist for the People’s Art Movement of the 1980s, and the social narratives played out between individuals and society, Bae uses his work as a platform for artistic intervention in social issues. Bae’s work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions including “Activating Korea: Tides of Collective Action” (2007); the 51st Venice Biennale (2005); the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Gwangju Biennales (2000, 2002, and 2004); and the 2nd Busan Biennale (2002). Bae has recently produced public murals for Seoul National School for the Blind and Seoul National School for the Deaf, and executed an instantiation of his children’s library, an ongoing project, at Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art.


John Bock

b. 1965, Gribbohm, Germany
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

John Bock works with sculpture and performance to produce immersive universes that vary widely in scale and material. Some are constructed from found objects, others from materials like fabric, metal, food, and clothing. The recurring symbol of an astronaut—or, as Bock calls him, “a little man in space”—expresses the scientific, political, technological, and philosophical concerns that converge in his collaged objects, “lecture” performances, and films. Bock’s work has been exhibited widely including exhibitions at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; as well as the Yokohama Triennale, Documenta, and the Venice Biennale. Bock’s work was featured in the New Museum’s inaugural exhibition, “Unmonumental” (2007-08).


Rana Hamadeh

b. 1983, Batroun, Lebanon
Lives and works in Enschede and Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Rana Hamadeh works primarily with lectures, performances, conversations, and installations. She focuses on speech and orality as a medium through which the conditions of spectatorship, boundaries, mechanisms, and authority of meaning production are to be questioned. The flux between fiction and nonfiction, presence and absence, plays a big role in her work, as it conjures a twist to the conventional understanding(s) of history, objects, language, subjectivity, and Otherness and the ethicality of their relations. Her work INTERROGATIONS 1-5 when they ask me I’ll introduce them to you was shown in the exhibition “Be(com)ing Dutch” at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2008.